Khrux @ Khrux @ttrpg.network

Posts

0

Comments

382

Joined

2 yr. ago

They did get engaged, maybe this is the cover story.

Honestly it's all an abstraction anyway but I absolutely would not bring my chompers to a knife fight.

This is a conceptual alternate history map of modern day North America without colonisation. It's still reasonably inaccurate of course but it's not meant to accurately portray the borders of a pre-colonised North America.

It's definitely an alternate history map, and I hope it's an accurate potential map of an uncolonized North America if it's cultures grew to nation state sizes.

I'm European so I'm not meaning to offend, but there's something very interesting to me try to visualise how America could have grown without colonisation, and perhaps this is through my European lense but I'd imagine borders would move and groups would swallow eachother up. The scale of countries on this map is pretty comparable to what we see in Europe and Asia, but I don't know enough about America to know if this is respectful to the placement and potential of Native American groups (e.g I think I've read before the the Comanche are a successful seperation from the Shoshone that was largely due to their expansion due to horses, which would have happened very differently sans colonisation), and I'm not even sure if this map follows natural borders like mountains and rivers, largely because I'm just not that familiar with America.

Oops, thanks.

Also, although I agree with the sentiment, I only need a mattress that's just good enough to not cause issues, because when I'm asleep, I can't care about the mattress quality.

Maybe I'm crazy or there's a cultural difference somewhere here, but if you needed to wear long sleeves then it's the texture of the material, but surely you'd have a bedsheet over the mattress and not be able to feel it directly?

One monster that's invulnerable to magic and one that's invulnerable to mundane in the same fight.

I often think about the fact that AC is intentionally so hard to increase but sometimes gold is necessary like a paladin (or good loot, but it's often expected that they'll save for plate), while a monk can increase theirs just by leveling.

I don't really have any AC critiques over this, but I have issues with gold and exactly how much should be given out. I now know that to earn 1500 gp is about a level 6 thing, but I don't know why, or even where I learnt it, I could easily be off by levels due to giving out the wrong loot, or a PC who roleplays spending their gold is mechanically harmed compared to a player with similar vices from another class. I'm not even sure how I'd handle this differently, except the more I learn 5e, the more scared I get of gold and time.

I can see a situation where a campaign centers around making monsters feel threatening and intentionally depriving a largely martial party of magical weapon. I've never ran a ghost or werewolf that is actually a problem due to either a spellcasting party or I already offered magical weapons. I kinda wish I had, because it would make that item feel much more exciting.

Meanwhile there are items like cast-off armour that don't really offer a major mechanical bonus, or even just an artificer or forge cleric making their armour magical themselves.

I don't like spam but I do like a good scam email, especially if they've actually given it some plot.

I've often had this silly scenario in my head.

You walk into a celebrated high class restaurant, and at the bottom of the menu, it reads "Human meat steak. $10,000". You ask the waiter who fetches the chef. The chef comes out and explains that after decades honing his craft, he feels like he's a master of his craft, and now he'd love the honour of cooking a steak taken from his own body. If anyone purchases the steak, a skilled surgeon will remove half a pound of meat safely from the chef, who will then prepare it for you, and the chef is visibly keen to serve this.

As a vegetarian, I honestly don't feel that this would bother me, if I had money to spend, the only reason I wouldn't go for it is that I'd worry the chef would come to regret giving up chunk of his ass or leg or whatever, and I'd be partially to blame, or that the chef was not thinking straight otherwise.

Most entertainingly, I think it would be vegan.

I adored the playtest for the 5e sorcerer before the 2014 PHB. I haven't read it in years but my memory is this.

• Hit die were definited by the subclass, with the two example subclasses, wild magic and draconic having a d6 and d8 respectively (look how the DNA of this carried into the PHB with the draconic soul sorcerer getting a +1 per level to hitpoints, but then isn't explored in any future subclasses.

• Sorcery points and spell slots are a singular meta-currency like spell points.

• Class features generally use spell points too.

• Most excitingly, subclasses have features that come online when you are low on sorcery points.

That final element has this amazing interplay where you feel that you're burning your humanity (or species neutral equivalent term) as you use magic, and your innate or monsterous side comes through, it was a really cool design and I'd love to see it taken even further with a subclass that also incorporated hitpoints into the flow somehow, meaning that you are a tank before you cast your spells, but literally burn out your life force as you do so, revealing the monster underneath. It could be really cool for a vampire or something else that has an interesting interplay with harm, healing and magic.

The concept didn't survive playtesting for three reasons, it's execution wasn't fantastic, it was far more unique than the other classes and it was far more difficult to learn than other classes. It's a shame because I'd have loved to see the class iterated on and explored further in playtesting.

I've often wondered why I've never seen an idea that explores combining Sorcery Points with spell slots but not spell points by using 1st level spell slots as sorcery points and offering far more low level spell slots than currently offered, but still less than the 20 that they have by 20th level. Then lock their subclass features behind having only x amount of spell slots remaining. Sorcerers already fill a niche of being the most reliable low level spell slot slingers with their flexibile casting feature, and with this, they'd have an incentive to burn them up quickly to access the meat of the character fantasy; the subclass.

This would have a totally different resource management to any other class and be narrativly weighted, as to let your true self out (like the avatar state, your vampiric or draconic self, your raw chaos magic etc).

Outside of this case, when do they come in use? It seems like an unconventional design choice as it's basically chance, outside of the occasional luck check or death saves, where does it come up?

I'm mostly asking as my experience is very 5e centric.

I realised you were talking about PF2e after reading other comments, I'm not too familiar with its rules so I didn't recognise it.

Are flat checks not altered by features that alter all checks in PF2e? There is no 'flat' terminology in the RPGs I'm familiar with so I just presumed it would be altered as it would be in 5e.

That's addressing a totally different issue to what the above piece, which is about maintaining action and agency when a PC is knocked unconscious.

The up-down yo-yo of 5e is a problem but the frustration here is when combat rounds are taking a while, it's so boring to just make one roll every 40 minutes.

I'm a big fan of the use of a dying condition, or at least being reduced to 0 hitpoints being referred to as dying, just because it's so clunky to accurately refer to it at the moment.

The thing I can see in yours that is perhaps an oversight (perhaps planned) is that anything that is designed to modify all saving throws such as the monks proficiency in all saves or the paladin's aura of protection would make succeeding by 10 or more easier in a way that's not currently covered by requiring a natural 20. (Both of these abilities currently apply to death saving throws but do not make natural 20s easier of course). Also bless, and any bonus to all saves from magic items work on death saving throws too. This also impacts the ability to fail by more than 10, making it effectively impossible without a different homebrew feature creating a penalty to the roll.

Seperatly you call it a check, which means it wouldn't be impacted by these saving throw alterations but would be impacted by anything which alters all ability checks such as the bard's Jack of all Trades, or more concerningly, the combination of the rogue's reliable talent and any way to gain proficiency in it, which is basically an automatic success.

There are a few currently niche cases where characters gain a bonus to all saving throws or specifically death saving throws which is intentionally factored into the power of the feature, and makes them exciting and useful, that are either hugely buffed (depending on how you rule their use) or totally discarded in replacement to other features that weren't balanced around this ability.

Something I do love in this is the ability to introduce the wounded condition outside of being unconscious. Imagine how scary something like a nightwalker would be if it's aura didn't do necrotic damage but instead just forced a con save Vs getting a point to your wounded condition.

Personally the way I'd handle this is to make dying a condition that is basically identical to the death saving throws mechanic currently in 5e, but have it reset when you gain hitpoints by any means, if then disconnect being unconscious from it entirely at a mechanical level and just say if you gain hitpoints when unconscious you may choose to instantly end the condition. This would mean everything that currently works in the game to offer a bonus to death saves remains, and in very rare cases, you may make death saving throws while not unconscious, either counting from there when you fall unconscious or dying while on your feet at 3 failures.

I'd also change taking damage while unconcious to just force you to make a threatened dying save, which is just like a normal death saving throw except you don't mark a success if you get 10 or more, you may only fail. This means that you can wail on an unconscious PC without worrying about killing them without agency. I'd probably also make the spare medicine checks function as a protected dying save, where you can't fail and can only gain a success on 10 or higher.

Edit: I didn't know this was pathfinder, I just assumed it was your homebrew for 5e.

More than 30 mins is good because I know I can sleep again or at least stay resting and cosy, less than 10 is good because I know I can keep my mind awake enough to get up feeling naturally well rested.

Fuck that sweet spot in the middle.

The thing is, it's quite easy for a marketing department to measure their success. They release an annoying unskippable YouTube and and change nothing else in their marketing and their profits go up by 1% or whatever. As much as I basically do no shopping where the day to day advertising I see can influence it, that's a pretty abnormal lifestyle pattern. Plus I'm still susceptible to choosing specific items inside a shop, and I definitely susceptible when I'm looking for specific products and come across secret ads disguised as advice.

It resembles mad cow disease because they're both prion diseases, which are more or less only spread by consumption of brain.

Some of the other nasty ones that keep my a little freaked out are Chronic wasting disease, aka the zombie deer disease and Fatal Insomnia , which just sounds like something straight from a horror film.